frJL96ei*i 


VOLUME  XIX 


SEPTEMBER,  1919 


NUMBER  11 


BULLETIN  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  GEORGIA 


•v*W.VSf* 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA  ORATION 

JUNE  18th,  1919 
Present-Day  Thoughts  on  the  American  Revolution 

PROFESSOR  CHARLES  AVcLEAN  ANDREWS 
ol  Yale  University 


Entered  at  the  Post  Office  at  Athens,  ua.,  as  Second  Class  Matter,  August  31, 1D05. 
under  Act  of  Congress  of  July  16th.  1904.  Issu<  1  Monthly  by  tbe  University. 


Serial  No.  305 


(d 

\ 


PRESENT-DAY  THOUGHTS  ON  THE  AMERICAN 
REVOLUTION 


PHI  BETA  KAPPA  ORATION 

Professor  Charles  McLean  Andrews,  of  Yale  University. 

iln  the  dual  role  which  has  been  assigned  to  me  this  morning 
of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  speaker  and  commencement  orator,  I  have  the 
very  great  honor  of  addressing  you  not  only  as  citizens  of  this  great 
republic,  keenly  alive  to  every  event  taking  place  in  the  world  today, 
but  also  as  a  brotherhood  of  scholars,  familiar  with  the  value  that 
scholarship  has  for  the  man  of  affairs  and  appreciative  of  the  con- 
tributions which  scholarship  is  making  everywhere  to  the  solution 
of  the  practical  problems  of  the  age.  In  the  presence  of  the  seem- 
ing chaos  produced  by  this  great  human  catastrophe  of  the  World 
War,  there  arises  an  urgent  call  for  such  knowledge  of  the  past  as 
may  enable  us  to  control  the  riotous  and  disordered  array  of  our 
thoughts  and  to  balance  the  forces  of  pessimism  and  optimism  that 
struggle  within  us  for  the  mastery.  Without  the  touchstone  of  his- 
tory, the  world  may  well  seem  to  us  a  world  in  ruins,  a  seething 
human  cauldron  of  revolution,  civil  war,  and  anarchy;  for  the  foun- 
dation stones  of  society  have  been  loosened,  and  for  years  to  come 
there  will  exist  unsettlement  and  change  as  the  result  of  the  fires 
that  have  burned  through  the  crust  of  the  existing  order  and  are 
altering  fundamentally  the  conditions  of  civilized  life.  So  it  has 
happened  before  in  times  of  crisis  in  human  affairs  that  the  founda- 
tions of  the  world  have  trembled  beneath  the  onward  tread  of  those 
inexorable  forces,  to  which  in  chronicled  form  we  give  the  name  of 
history. 

To  the  historian  the  present  situation  represents,  though  on  a 
scale  more  gigantic  than  ever  before,  the  struggles  of  an  intrin- 
sically healthy  and  solvent  human  society  to  cure  the  diseases  every- 
where prevailing  within  its  political  and  industrial  systems.  The 
physicians  may  not  be  now,  as  they  have  frequently  not  been  in  the 
past,  men  of  superlative  sagacity,  experience,  and  wisdom,  but  their 
efforts  mark  a  healthy  functioning  process,  which  in  the  end  will 
bring  to  the  human  race  new  life  and  vigor,  peace,  order,  and  pros- 
perity, where  now  confusion  and  disturbance  reign  supreme.  These 
things  must  be.  Through  one  great  struggle  after  another  man  ha* 
staggered  forward  to  an  unknown  goal,  uncertain  even  of  the  path 
of  his  progress,  trusting  that  the  way  of  his  going  is  guided  by  the 
destinies  that  lie  deep-seated  within  him,  the  spiritual  law  of  his 
being.  With  each  generation  the  load  becomes  heavier,  the  prob- 
lem of  its  burden  more  complex,  as  the  area  of  mutual  action  and 
interaction  among  the  nations  widens  and  the  submerged  classes 
rise  to  prominence,  overthrowing  privilege  and  preferment,  and 
compelling  a  recasting  of  political,  social,  and  industrial  relations 
in  the  interest  of  a  greater  number  of  self-conscious  and  awakened 


men  and  women  than  have  ever  before  demanded  and  exercised  a 
<part  in  the  world's  affairs. 

To  meet  the  new  conditions,  the  leaders  of  the  victorious  nations 
are  devising  not  only  terms  of  peace  but  also  new  machinery, 
whereby  reorganization  and  reconstruction  can  be  effected  and  main- 
tained. On  one  hand,  they  are  perfecting  a  League  of  Nations, 
perhaps  the  most  daring  innovation  in  human  political  organiza- 
tion that  the  world  has  ever  known.  On  the  other,  they  are  consid- 
ering, as  never  before  in  the  history  of  peace  congresses,  the  welfare 
of  peoples  rather  than  the  claims  of  governments,  and  are  facing 
with  sincerity  and  courage  the  incontestable  fact  that  the  future 
peace  and  prosperity  of  the  world  rests,  not  on  the  adjustment  of 
boundaries  or  even  on  the  recognition  of  new  racial  groups  but  on 
the  establishment,  of  high  labor  standards  by  means  of  international 
agreements  and  a  better  definition  of  the  principles  that  must  gov- 
ern the  relations  of  capitalists  and  the  working  classes  in  every 
state  where  social  justice  prevails. 

With  all  its  faults,  and  if  we  are  to  'believe  its  critics  they  are 
many,  the  League  of  Nations  represents  a  mighty  forward  move- 
ment, as  far  in  advance  of  any  understanding  hitherto  reached 
among  the  nations  as  are  the  ideas  of  the  twentieth  century  in  ad- 
vance of  those  of  the  eighteenth.  It  is  no  agreement  of  kings  or  of 
royal  plenipotentiaries;  it  is  not  the  work  of  privileged  class  or 
caste;  whatever  its  limitations,  it  is  a  manifestation  of  popular 
wills,  expressed,  in  the  majority  of  instances,  through  chosen  rep- 
resentatives, and  designed  to  further  not  only  peace  among  the 
nations  but  the  interests  of  those  who  make  up  the  main  body  of 
their  peoples.  How  it  will  operate  no  man  can  tell.  It  will  face 
problems  of  terrible  complexity;  divided  and  antagonistic  interests 
that  seem  to  admit  of  no  compromise;  new  issues  that  have  for  their 
settlement  neither  precedent  nor  example;  and  obstructions  that  will 
appear  at  times  almost  unsurmountable.  These  are  the  inevitable 
reactions  that  follow  vast  social  disturbances,  the  growing  pains 
of  a  dynamic  society  that  is  progressing,  often  in  curiously  blunder- 
ing fashion,  toward  higher  ideals  of  equity  and  justice.  The  deferred 
peace-time  activities  of  four  years,  the  rehabilitation  of  war-worn 
property,  the  need  of  credit  for  the  resumption  of  business  enter- 
prise, the  immediate  requirements  of  distressed  and  stricken  peo- 
ples— all  these  aggregate  a  total  of  work  to  be  done,  of  wounds  to 
be  healed,  of  mouths  to  be  fed,  of  industry  to  be  reorganized,  of 
patience  and  forbearance  to  be  exercised  never  before  equaled  in  the 
memory  of  man.  There  will  be  confusion,  conflict,  and  perplexity 
before  a  normal  condition  is  achieved;  there  will  be  much  adjust- 
ment and  much  measuring  up  to  greater  responsibilities  during  this 
reconstructive  process  which  is  leading  to  new  and  better  human 
relationships.  Over  and  over  again  has  history  shown  us  changes 
apparently  for  the  worse,  which  in  reality  were  but  manifestations 
of  a  transition  to  higher  forms  of  social  organization  and  methods 
of  government.  To  the  historian  the  future  is  to  be  trusted  not 
dreaded,   and   he   prefers   to   cultivate   in   himself   what   some   goocl 


priest  said  of  his  religion,  "A  great  deal  of  faith  tempered  by  a 
little  doubt,  not  a  great  deal  of  doubt  tempered  by  a  little  faith." 

One  feature  of  the  war  that  is  of  conspicuous  significance  in  its 
promise  for  the  future  is  the  drawing  together  of  'Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States  in  a  new  fellowship  of  understanding  and  esteem, 
due  not  merely  to  a  sense  of  common  danger  and  an  association  in 
arms,  but  even  more  to  a  sentiment  born  of  oneness  of  language, 
institutions,  and  purpose.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  contro- 
versies in  the  past  between  the  two  great  ibranches  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race,  both  before  and  since  the  shock  of  revolution  broke  the 
ties  of  colonial  relationship,  the  events  of  the  World  War  have  ban- 
ished without  likelihood  of  return  the  bitterness  engendered  thereby 
and  have  aroused  to  an  extent  never  before  known  a  feeling  of 
respect,  charity,  and  good  will.  The  two  nations  have  awakened  to 
a  consciousness  of  common  kinship  and  common  ideals  and  to  a 
realization  of  the  fact  that  despite  differences  of  opinion,  habit,  and 
temperament — the  inevitable  consequences  of  environment  and  his- 
torical circumstances — they  are  fundamentally  alike  in  their  views 
of  political  liberty  and  their  standards  of  social  justice,  for  which 
each  has  in  its  own  way  struggled  in  the  past.  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States  stand  as  sponsors  for  a  progressive  and  liberal 
civilization,  not  as  unwilling  allies  but  as  two  great  powers  actuated 
by  principles  and  traditions  derived  from  a  common  source  and 
united  to  defend  common  ideals  in  life  and  government.  Such 
mutual  understanding,  once  entered  upon  with  sincerity  and  con- 
viction, cannot  be  broken,  for  it  rests  to  an  extent  never  realized 
before  upon  the  'belief  that  these  two  peoples  working  in  harmony 
are  trustees  for  the  civilization  not  only  of  the  Old  World  but  also 
of  the  New. 

Perhaps  the  most  serious  obstacle  to  a  harmonious  rapprochement 
between  the  two  countries  is  in  character  not  economic  or  com- 
mercial but  sentimental.  The  competition  of  the  United  States  in 
the  field  of  industrialism  has  been  very  great  and  has  exercised  a 
direct  and  powerful  influence  on  the  business  activities  and  meth- 
ods of  Great  Britain  herself,  but  it  has  never  roused  a  feeling  of 
antagonism  and  distrust  between  the  two  peoples,  except  here  and 
there  and  temporarily.  More  deeply  seated  than  any  commercial 
jealousy  or  dislike  is  the  time-honored  antipathy  due  to  the  Amer- 
ican interpretation  of  the  facts  of  our  early  history.  I  know  of  no 
phenomenon  in  the  realm  of  psychology,  unless  it  be  the  state  of 
the  German  mind  or  the  attitude  of  the  Irish  toward  the  English 
at  the  present  time,  that  is  more  extraordinary  than  this  persistence 
of  the  idea  that  England  has  with  malice  aforethought  selfishly  and 
maliciously  set  out  to  conquer  the  world  to  her  own  advantage. 
Such  an  idea  springs  from  a  false  reading  of  both  English  and 
American  history  and  from  the  unworthy  habit  of  imputing  motives 
of  self  interest  and  desire  for  aggrandizement,  where  such  motives 
have  never  existed.  Had  the  British  empire  been  'built  on  a  foun- 
dation of  brute  force,  tyranny,  and  fraud  the  charge  might  be  justi- 
fied, but  in  fact  the  contrary  is  true,  the  empire  has  grown  up,  not 


through  conscious  plan  of  kings  and  statesmen  but  through  his- 
torical necessity,  expressive  of  the  instincts  and  strivings  of  a  com- 
mercial and  colonizing  people.  Sir  John  Seeley  once  said  that  the 
British  had  "conquered  and  peopled  half  the  world  in  a  fit  of  absence 
of  mind,"  but  it  would  perhaps  be  truer  to  say  that  they  had  done 
so  more  or  less  unintentionally  and  in  a  sense  unwillingly,  shrink- 
ing from  rather  than  seeking  the  burdens  and  responsibilities  of 
empire,  driven  on  by  circumstances  that  no  honorable  people  would 
wish  to  avoid.  Far  from  me  to  say  that  the  acts  of  individual 
Englishmen  have  always  been  above  reproach  or  that  the  means 
employed  have  always  been  free  from  selfishness  or  disregard  of  the 
interests  of  others — for  in  fact,  Great  Britain  must  bear  her 
full  share  of  the  world's  sins  and  blunders, — but  taken  as  a  whole 
no  one  can  deny  that  the  development  of  the  British  constitution 
and  the  expansion  of  the  British  empire  has  served  an  enormously 
useful  purpose  in  the  social  evolution  of  the  human  race.  General 
Smuts  has  recently  said  that  the  British  empire  is  the  most  import- 
ant and  fascinating  problem  in  political  and  constitutional  govern- 
ment that  the  world  has  ever  seen:  and  one  of  the  opponents  of 
British  rule  in  India,  a  native  revolutionist,  has  lately  borne  wit- 
ness to  a  change  of  heart  in  asserting  that  "English  history,  be- 
ginning with  Magna  Charta  and  ending  with  the  law  granting 
suffrage  to  women  is  the  most  complete  record  of  'freedom  slowly 
broadening  from  precedent  to  precedent'  in  the  annals  of  human 
evolution."  "It  has  been  well  said,"  he  adds,  "that  you  cannot 
argue  a  man  into  slavery  in  the  English  language.  You  must 
live  in  England,  learn  from  England,  work  with  English  men  and 
English  women,  and  study  English  and  American  history,  if  you  are 
to  catch  a  breath  of  that  spirit  which  has  made  England  free  and 
great."  To  the  historian  there  is  nothing  remarkable  about  these 
statements;  they  are  chiefly  significant  as  coming  from  former  op- 
ponents of  the  British  empire. 

More  important  for  our  purpose  here  is  it  to  examine  the  nature 
of  the  enmity  arising  from  the  incidents  of  our  Revolutionary  his- 
tory and  to  discover  why  it  is  that  the  historian  approaching  the 
subject  with  an  open  and  unbiased  mind  is  often  bewildered  by  the 
fictitious  character  of  popular  judgments.  He  finds  widely  preva- 
lent in  America  a  very  curious  attitude  toward  the  events  and  per- 
sonalities of  the  pre-Revolutionary  and  Revolutionary  eras.  He 
finds  that  these  events  and  persons  have  become  in  a  measure  sac- 
rosanct, the  objects  of  an  almost  idolatrous  veneration,  hallowed  in 
an  atmosphere  of  piety  and  patriotism,  and  guarded  from  the  in- 
trusion of  the  truth-seeker  by  vigilant  keepers — patriotic  societies, 
local  societies,  race  societies,  and  other  self-appointed  custodians, 
whose  inclination  is  to  raise  the  men  of  the  past  above  the  level  of 
ordinary  mortals  and  to  treat  the  traditions  of  our  past  as  if  they 
were  revelations  of  the  Most  High.  These  legends  of  the  American 
Revolution  have  done  much  to  keep  alive  among  succeeding  gener- 
ations a  spirit  of  unfriendliness  for  England  that  is  unworthy  of  a 
great  and  intelligent  people.     Some  of  the  statements  contained  in 


the  Declaration  of  Independence — a  document  written  in  the  heat  of 
excitement  and  with  ibitter  intensity  of  feeling; — the  strongly  anti- 
British  text-books,  which  have  been  wont  to  picture  British  king 
and  ministry  as  possessed  of  cunning  and  malevolence,  oppressors 
of  the  colonists  and  enemies  of  the  human  race;  the  teachings  of 
Bancroft  and  his  school,  among  whom  we  must  count,  unhappily, 
the  latest  popular  historian  of  the  Revolution,  Sir  George  Trevelyan 
— all  these  elements  have  tended  to  perpetuate  an  unreal  version  of 
our  relations  with  England  both  before  and  during  the  Revolution. 
A  version  of  this  kind  once  in  print  cannot  easily  be  changed.  So 
extreme  often  is  the  antagonism  of  political  speakers  and  legis- 
lators, writers  and  patriotic  societies,  that  one  is  at  times  forced  to 
conclude  that  the  average  American  cares  little  for  the  truth  of  his 
own  history  and  that  if  what  he  reads  sufficiently  glorifies  his 
country's  past  he  will  search  no  further.  There  is  an  old  Latin 
saying  that  a  people  which  wishes  to  be  deceived  will  be  deceived, 
and  the  American  who  is  content  with  an  interpretation  that  trans- 
forms incidents  into  miracles  and  leaders  into  demigods  naturally  is 
•bound  to  resent  the  effort  of  the  historian  to  treat  either  events  or 
individuals  as  human.  To  many  an  American  the  Revolution  has 
become,  as  Mr.  Sidney  Fisher  has  wittily  said,  not  a  revolution  but 
a  social  function,  in  which  all  scholarly,  refined,  and  conservative 
persons  might  unhesitatingly  have  taken  part. 

But  the  healthy  instinct  of  future  generations  will  not  be  content 
with  such  a  vapid  interpretation  of  our  past;  it  will  demand  the 
truth,  no  matter  how  little  flattering  it  may  prove  to  be;  and  the 
day  will  come — in  fact  it  is  not  far  distant — when  our  history  will 
be  studied  for  its  own  sake  and  when  the  events  of  our  Revolution 
will  no  longer  be  used  to  glorify  ancestors,  to  justify  racial  claims 
to  prominence  in  our  struggle  for  independence,  or,  what  Is  worse 
than  all  else,  to  increase  the  animosity  toward  Great  Britain  on 
the  basis  of  events  occurring  a  century  and  a  half  ago.  Many  of 
the  current  interpretations  of  our  Revolutionary  history  are  merely 
forms  of  propaganda  designed  for  party  advantage  or  founded  on 
mistaken  ideas  of  patriotic  duty.  And  when  all  these  are  swept 
away  and  the  events  of  these  momentous  years  are  studied  for  the 
truth  that  is  in  them  then  only  will  the  profession  of  historian  have 
come  into  its  own  in  America. 

We  have  gone  about  the  study  of  the  Revolution  in  the  wrong 
way.  We  have  made  too  munh  of  the  persons  concerned,  taking 
them  out  of  their  setting,  and  clothing  them  with  attributes  which 
are  often  the  products  of  our  own  imagination.  We  have  pictured 
our  ancestors  as  we  have  wished  them  to  be  and  not  as  they  were. 
We  have  made  no  adequate  attempt  to  comprehend  the  deep-seated 
contrasts  between  the  two  countries  and  the  different  ways  of  think- 
ing and  feeling  that  made  it  almost  impossible  for  each  to  under- 
stand the  other.  Single  individuals,  no  matter  how  important,  do 
not  create  and  stop  revolutions  at  will,  however  much  they  may  lead 
and  direct  them.  Such  persons  are  themselves  subject  to  the  con- 
ditions that  surround  them  and  to  the  environment  in  which  they 


are  placed.  Connected  with  every  revolution  are  two  great  and 
powerful  influences,  the  conservative  and  the  radical,  each  with  its 
habits,  impulses,  and  convictions  and  each  must  be  studied  with 
equal  thoroughness,  care,  and  sympathy.  Yet  how  many  of  the 
writers,  who  have  so  glibly  condemned  England  for  tyranny,  craft, 
and  selfish  ambitions,  have  any  real  knowledge  of  the  spirit  which 
governed  her  at  the  time  of  our  Revolution  or  of  the  irreconcilable 
differences  that  existed  between  the  point  of  view  of  an  English 
conservative  and  that  of  a  colonial  radical.  Is  it  fair  to  draw 
conclusions  when  we  know  only  half  of  the  story  or  when  we  have 
no  sufficient  appreciation  of  the  real  issues  at  stake?  Most  of  our 
children  learn  their  history  through  the  medium  of  biography  and 
to  them  George  III  was  a  monster  of  wickedness,  responsible  for  the 
Revolution  and  the  loss  to  Great  Britain  of  her  colonies.  What  a 
trivial  explanation  of  a  cosmic  event!  I  believe  that  it  would  be 
possible  to  teach  the  truth  even  to  the  children,  if  only  we  had  the 
right  kind  of  text-books  and  the  right  kind  of  teachers  who  them- 
selves understand  the  issues  involved. 

What  were  these  issues?  Briefly  stated  they  were  as  follows: 
For  a  hundred  years  before  the  Revolution,  the  colonies  and  the 
mother  country  had  been  moving  in  exactly  opposite  directions,  the 
former  toward  intensive  self-government,  the  latter  toward  empire. 
The  colonists  were  absorbed  in  themselves,  thinking  only  of  their 
rights  as  individuals  and  their  privileges  as  members  of  self-gov- 
erning communities.  They  were  paying  no  attention  to  the  world 
of  affairs  outside  of  themselves  or  to  the  interests  of  the  mother 
country  across  the  seas.  On  the  other  hand  Great  Britain  was 
moving  toward  enlargement  and  expansion;  her  ministries,  with 
vast  accessions  of  territory  unexpectedly  thrust  upon  them,  were 
endeavoring  often  in  bewilderment  and  unconcealed  dismay  to  unify 
and  centralize  the  many  varied  and  far-flung  dependencies  of  the 
British  crown.  Distracted  by  the  problems  and  responsibilities  of 
empire,  they  were  paying  very  little  attention  to  affairs  at  home  and 
were  neglecting  the  domestic  needs  of  the  English  people.  Among 
these  problems  none  was  greater  than  this:  could  they  reconcile 
the  divergent  and  antagonistic  tendencies  of  colonies  and  mother 
country  and  adjust  the  colonial  demand  for  greater  freedom  and 
self-control  to  the  equally  imperative  need  of  preserving  the  integ- 
rity of  the  empire;  or  were  the  differences  to  go  on  widening  and 
deepening  until  all  hope  of  reconciliation  was  past  and  war  only 
could  decide  the  issue?  We  know  the  answer,  for  the  War  of  the 
American  Revolution  shows  the  failure  of  the  British  policy,  and 
shows  further  that  the  statesmen  of  the  eighteenth  century — Brit- 
ish and  colonial  alike — were  unable  to  find  at  that  time  a  solution 
of  the  colonial  problem,  whereby  the  American  colonies — the  first 
of  Britain's  great  self-governing  dominions — could  be  retained  as 
part  of  the  British  empire.  It  shows  that  British  leaders  had  no 
vision  of  an  imperial  union  based  on  equality  and  liberty  and  held 
together  by  ties  of  sentiment  and  affection.  They  did  not  realize 
that  there  was  something  radically  wrong  in  their  management  of 

6 


colonial  affairs  and  that  to  apply  coercion  to  a  proud  and  self- 
willed  people  was  at  best  a  crude  and  irremediable  blunder. 

Yet  even  so,  the  failure  to  solve  the  colonial  problem,  as  rt  is 
being  solved  today,  does  not  explain  why  reconciliation  was  not 
effected  and  why  some  working  form  of  adjustment  was  not  arrived 
at.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  at  first  a  majority  of  the  colonists 
did  not  want  revolution.  They  looked  on  the  connection  with  Eng- 
land as  necessary  and  beneficial  and  preferred  to  maintain  it  as 
long  as  it  was  possible  to  do  so.  They  would  have  been  content 
with  moderate  concessions  and  had  such  been  made  it  seems  more 
than  likely  that  the  conservative  majority  in  America  would  have 
been  able  to  prevent  the  radical  minority  from  going  to  extremes 
and  committing  the  country  to  war.  Over  and  over  again  in  study- 
ing the  period  from  1764  to  1774,  we  are  driven  to  believe  that  a 
little  more  yielding,  a  little  more  of  the  spirit  of  friendship  and 
compromise  on  both  sides,  would  have  calmed  the  troubled  waters 
and  stilled  the  storm  that  was  brewing.  Why  a  dispute  about  trade, 
which  could  have  been  ended  with  satisfaction  to  both  parties,  and 
a  dispute  about  taxation,  which  in  its  chief  features  was  quieted  by 
the  repeal  of  the  acts  that  provoked  it,  should  have  developed  into 
an  angry  rupture,  accompanied  by  defiance  and  coercion  and  fol- 
lowed by  war,  is  one  of  the  questions  that  cannot  be  answered  except 
by  a  study  of  conditions  that  do  not  lie  observable  on  the  surface. 

England  at  this  time  was  an  old  and  settled  country,  with  the 
traditions  behind  her  of  more  than  a  thousand  years.  She  had 
passed  through  a  long  period  of  unrest,  ending  in  the  so-called 
"glorious"  Revolution  of  1688 — a  revolution  which  brought  neither 
glory  nor  political  advantage  to  the  majority  of  the  English  people 
— and  hal  emerged  into  the  placid  calm  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
during  which  those  in  power  firmly  believed  that  in  all  essential 
particulars  their  system  of  government  was  the  best  in  the  world 
and  needed  no  important  change  or  improvement.  The  era  was 
marked  by  good  feeling,  except  for  the  petty  bickering  of  political 
factions,  and  by  complacent  satisfaction  among  those  who  held  in 
their  hands  the  reins  of  government.  These  men  were  middle  class 
in  origin  and  interest  and  they  alone  controlled  the  voting  and  could 
sit  in  parliament.  Heavy  disabilities  and  penalties  lay  upon  Roman 
Catholics,  Unitarians,  and  Jews,  and  even  Dissenters  were  barred 
from  the  borough  offices.  The  nobility,  who  as  a  rule  had  a  middle 
class  background,  were  in  accord  with  the  mercantile  element  in 
their  eagerness  for  trade  and  speculation,  and  in  conjunction  with 
the  monied  gentry,  the  merchants,  and  the  lawyers,  constituted  the 
privileged  part  of  the  nation — the  rulers  as  contrasted  with  the 
ruled.  This  privileged  class,  composing  but  a  very  small  part  of  the 
people  of  the  United  Kingdom,  exercised  political  power,  monopo- 
lized the  offices  of  state,  dominated  parliament,  and  directly  or  in- 
directly determined  the  policies  of  ministries  and  shaped  legisla- 
tion. Their  supremacy  was  unchallenged,  for  the  lower  classes  were 
powerless  to  oppose  them.  Their  activities  were  regulated  by  the 
only    standard    which    they    understood — the    standard    of    money. 


Brains  and  birth  counted  for  little,  except  as  middle  class  ad- 
juncts, and  honesty,  responsibility,  and  devotion  to  duty  were  qual- 
ities more  honored  in  the  breach  than  in  the  observance.  Bribery 
in  elections,  peculation  and  fraud  in  administrations,  avarice  in 
family  relations,  and  a  general  scramble  for  personal  profit  made 
the  era  one  of  sordid  ambitions  and  unjust  distribution  of  wealth. 
England  at  the  time  of  our  Revolution  was  a  middle  class  hunting 
ground,  in  which  civil  and  military  offices  were  deemed  legitimate 
prey  for  the  spoiler. 

Executive  control  was  in  the  hands  of  a  whig  and  tory  oligarchy, 
and  parliament,  where  the  middle  class  reigned  supreme,  was  a  kind 
of  close  corporation,  screened  from  the  outside  world  and  secret  in 
Its  proceedings.  To  publish  debates  or  division  lists  was  not  only 
a  high  indiginity  but  also  a  notorious  breach  of  privilege.  The  mem- 
bers, safe  from  publicity,  were  lax  in  attendance  and  dilatory  in  leg- 
islation and  were  concerned  more  with  the  laws  relating  to  middle 
class  interests  than  with  such  as  provided  for  reform  or  laid  down 
any  great  principles  of  government  or  administration.  The  middle 
class  mind  was  not  progressive.  It  was  embedded  in  tradition  and 
dominated  by  fixed  ideas  of  political  and  social  relations.  The 
rights  of  property  were  more  important  than  the  claims  of  humanity 
and  the  idea  of  passing  laws  for  the  benefit  and  uplift  of  the  lower 
classes — workmen,  artisans,  and  agricultural  and  mining  laborers, 
not  yet  awakened  to  class  consciousness — was  almost  entirely  ab- 
sent from  their  thoughts.  Christopher  Gadsden's  reference  to 
"those  latent  though  inherent  rights  of  society,  which  no  climate, 
no  time,  no  constitution,  no  contract  can  ever  destroy  or  diminish" 
would  have  seemed  to  the  middle  class  Englishman  of  the  eighteenth 
century  a  mere  flight  of  fancy,  having  no  meaning  for  an  everyday 
world.  He  could  not  possibly  have  seen  its  application  either  to 
the  restless  and  high-spirited  colonists  in  America  or  to  the  un- 
privileged and  moneyless  classes  in  England. 

The  House  of  Commons,  which  originated  the  laws  so  obnoxious 
to  the  colonists,  had  become  at  this  time  the  leading  member  of  the 
law-making  body,  and  its  statutes  were  already  supplanting  the 
executive  orders  in  council  as  instruments  of  government  both  in 
England  and  in  the  colonies.  This  advance  to  a  position  of  leader- 
ship over  the  House  of  Lords  developed  in  the  commoners  a  sense  of 
solidarity  that  had  hardly  existed  before  and  awakened  in  them  a 
consciousness  of  power  and  authority  that  rendered  them  extraor- 
dinarily sensitive  to  their  rights  and  privileges,  particularly  after 
1760.  To  "insult"  crown  and  government,  as  did  John  Wilkes  in 
the  North  Briton,  or  to  question  their  competency  to  legislate  for 
America,  as  did  the  colonists  after  1765,  were  acts  defiant  of  con- 
stituted authority  deserving  condemnation  and  punishment.  Ex- 
cept in  a  few  noteworthy  cases,  such  as  those  of  Pitt,  Conway, 
Barre,  Burke,  and  other  sympathizers  with  America,  members  of 
the  ministries  and  of  parliament  saw  in  colonial  complaints  no  re- 
flection upon  their  own  conduct  of  government,  no  manifestation 
of  discontent  based  on  legitimate  grievances.     They  were  beginning 

8 


to  believe  that  government  by  parliament,  as  it  then  existed,  was 
part  of  the  divine  law. 

The  official  middle  class  mind  was  obsessed  with  a  veneration  of 
the  constitution,  a  passion  for  legality,  and  a  deep-seated  hostility 
to  reform,  especially  in  the  crude  and  elementary  franchise  which 
made  possible  their  domination  of  political  and  parliamentary  office. 
(More  important  for  our  purpose  was  their  aversion  to  the  very  idea 
of  the  "liberty"  which  the  colonists  demanded  and  their  unchang- 
ing conviction  that  a  colony  was  of  necessity  a  subordinate  and  con- 
tributory part  of  the  British  empire,  and  must  continue  to  be  so, 
as  long  as  it  remained  a  colony.  Though  there  were  many  in  Eng- 
land who  thoroughly  disliked  the  government's  policy  of  taxation 
and  coercion  as  applied  to  America  and  though  there  were  a  few, 
among  whom  was  George  Grenville  himself,  who  saw  that  some 
day  the  colonies  would  probably  become  a  separate  kingdom, 
nevertheless  it  is  doubtful  if  there  were  any — not  even  Burke  or 
Pitt  or  others  friendly  to  America — who  thought  it  wise  to  change 
in  any  important  particular  the  policy  that  rendered  the  colonies 
serviceable  to  England.  Even  Adam  Smith  viewed  the  colonial 
demand  for  economic  freedom  and  legislative  independence  as  im- 
possible, and  believed  that  colonies  which  recognized  no  obligations 
toward  the  mother  country  were  worse  than  useless  and  that  it  were 
better  to  have  no  colonies  at  all  than  those  that  were  unremuner- 
ative. 

iSuch  was  England  at  the  time  of  her  trouble  with  the  colonies: 
a  land  of  two  nations,  one  privileged  and  honored,  divinely  invested 
with  the  right  to  rule;  the  other  unprivileged  and  ignored,  equally 
appointed  by  the  eternal  law  to  be  ruled.  The  colonists  faced  an 
old  country,  with  a  highly  developed  and  complex  social  organiza- 
tion, in  which  manufactures,  industry,  trade,  and  commerce — marks 
of  a  socialized  state — were  more  important  than  agriculture,  and 
where  rights  based  on  history,  law,  and  the  possession  of  property 
were  cultivated  to  the  complete  atrophy  of  those  that  were  merely 
human.  They  faced  a  privileged  ruling  class,  sensitive,  exclusive, 
and  inclined  to  arrogance,  deeply  concerned  with  mercantile  inter- 
ests and  the  maintenance  of  their  own  power,  and  caring  but  little 
for  art,  literature,  and  the  finer  spiritual  aspects  of  life. 

In  contrast  to  this  highly  conventionalized  society,  with  its 
stereotyped  system  of  thought  and  government,  the  American  col- 
onies constituted  an  agricultural  frontier  with  an  environment  that 
was  favorable  to  the  development  of  man  as  an  individual  rather 
than  as  a  member  of  society.  The  New  England  towns,  which  in 
most  instances  were  agricultural  communities,  and  in  which,  out- 
side of  Boston,  the  population  ran  from  a  few  hundreds  to  a  thous- 
and or  two,  tended  to  be  radical  in  feeling.  Dominated  by  the 
Congregational  system  of  church  organization  and  overcharged  with 
the  spirit  of  self-government,  in  that  they  gave  to  every  voting  in- 
habitant an  opportunity  of  expressing  his  own  opinion,  they  were 
environed  with  an  atmosphere  of  individualism  that  was  congenial 
to   the   growth   of  such    doctrines   as   those  of   natural    rights,    in- 

9 


dependent  of  law,  convention,  and  tradition,  and  hostile  to  all 
ideas  based  only  on  history,  precedent,  and  man-made  statute. 
"God  and  nature  brought  us  into  the  world  free  men,"  said  the 
Wallingford  fathers,  "and  by  solemn  charter,  compact,  and  agree- 
ment we  came  into  the  English  constitution."  iSuch  a  statement  as 
this  simply  could  not  have  been  understood  by  a  member  of  the 
British  ministry  or  of  parliament,  or  by  a  legal  adviser  of  the 
crown,  all  of  whom  would  have  called  it  nonsense,  as  from  a  consti- 
tutional point  of  view  it  was. 

This  radical  attitude  of  the  colonists  is  admirably  expressed  in  a 
Massachusetts  statement  of  1762:  "The  natural  rights  of  the  col- 
onists, we  humbly  conceive  to  be  the  same  with  those  of  all  other 
British  subjects  and  indeed  of  all  mankind.  The  principal  of  these 
rights  is  to  be  'free  from  any  superior  power  on  earth  and  not  to 
be  under  the  will  or  legislative  authority  of  man,  but  to  have  only 
the  law  of  nature  for  his  rule.'  In  general  freedom  of  men  under 
government  is  to  have  standing  fundamental  rules  to  live  by,  com- 
mon to  every  one  of  that  society  and  made  by  the  legislative  power 
erected  in  it;  a  liberty  to  follow  my  own  will  in  all  things  where 
that  rule  prescribes  not,  and  not  to  be  subject  to  the  inconstant, 
uncertain,  unknown,  arbitrary  will  of  another  man.  This  liberty 
is  not  only  the  right  of  Britons  and  British  subjects,  but  the  right 
of  all  men  in  society,  and  is  so  inherent  that  they  can't  give  it  up 
without  becoming  slaves,  by  which  they  forfeit  even  life  itself. 
Civil  society,  great  and  small,  is  but  the  union  of  many,  for  the 
mutual  preservation  of  life,  liberty,  and  estate.  These  notions  of 
liberty  had  the  ancient  Greeks  and  Romans,  and  the  same  idea  had 
our  ancestors  in  Britain,  long  before  the  discovery  of  America. 
Most  of  the  transactions  from  the  grant  of  Magna  Charta  to  the 
Revolution  [of  1688]  may  be  considered  as  one  combined  struggle 
between  prince  and  people,  all  tending  to  that  happy  establishment 
which  Great  Britain  has  since  enjoyed  and  is  every  day  increasing 
to  perfection." 

Except  for  the  last  statement,  with  which  he  could  have  heartily 
agreed,  the  average  Englishman  of  the  privileged  class  would  have 
found  these  utterances  not  only  unintelligible  but  positively  danger- 
ous, as  much  so  as  the  statements  of  radicals,  here  and  in  Europe, 
seem  to  many  in  America  today.  If  the  Englishman  could  not  un- 
derstand the  situation  at  home,  where  lived  thousands  of  men  suffer- 
ing grievous  wrongs,  social  and  legal,  and  barred  from  nearly  every- 
thing that  made  for  life,  liberty,  and  estate,  how  could  he  under- 
stand these  voices  from  America,  which  expressed  their  grievances 
— the  grievances  of  a  self-conscious  people — in  language  so  remote 
from  his  comprehension  and  experience  as  to  seem  merely  the  mouth- 
ings  of  theorists  and  radicals. 

Yet  it  is  not  surprising  that  he  did  not  understand  them,  for 
though  colonial  grievances  were  real,  the  arguments  based  upon 
them  were  often  purely  intellectual,  drawn  from  the  writings  of 
Hobbes  and  Hooker,  Selden,  Sidney,  and  Locke,  among  which  those 
of  Hobbes  and  Sidney  had  the  greatest  influence  in  America.      In 

10 


many  of  their  resolutions  and  petitions  the  colonists  pictured  society 
as  a  political  Utopia,  unlike  anything  that  ever  had  been,  and  far, 
very  far,  from  "that  happy  establishment"  which  Englishmen  at 
home  were  at  that  time  "enjoying."  They  apparently  had  no  real 
knowledge  of  the  small  measure  of  "liberty"  accorded  to  the  ma- 
jority of  Englishmen  of  that  day  or  the  still  smaller  measure  ac- 
corded to  the  common  man  in  past  ages.  The  more  intellectual 
among  them  did  honestly  believe  in  the  contractual  origin  of  the 
state,  in  the  sacred  and  inviolable  rights  of  Englishmen,  and  in  the 
original  and  inherent  rights  of  all  mankind,  and  that  belief,  whether 
fanciful  or  not,  must  be  reckoned  with  as  among  the  causes  of  the 
Revolution.  But  middle  class  Englishmen,  who  had  no  difficulty  in 
understanding  grievances  about  trade  and  grievances  about  taxation 
— for  both  were  tangible  and  concerned  what  they  knew  best, 
money — could  make  little  out  of  these  constitutional  claims  of  the 
colonists  or  of  this  talk  of  the  law  of  nature  and  of  nations,  of 
reason,  and  of  iGod.  iSuch  claims  and  such  talk  seemed  only  to 
threaten  that  "beautiful  form  of  civil  government"  from  which 
they  derived  their  influence  and  under  the  protection  of  which  they 
were  secured  in  their  offices  and  possessions.  They  deemed  these 
claims  seditious,  because  if  recognized  they  would  undermine  the 
foundations  of  the  existing  political  order,  and  anything,  whether 
in  England  or  America,  that  endangered  the  integrity  of  the  British 
constitution,  as  established  by  the  "glorious"  Revolution,  was  rank 
radicalism.  Against  this  immutable  dictum  of  the  ruling  classes 
the  unprivileged  masses  of  England  herself  hurled  themselves  in 
vain  for  many  a  long  year;  but  their  fellow  radicals  in  America, 
further  advanced  as  they  were  in  political  education  and  themselves 
participators  in  their  own  governments  three  thousand  miles  away, 
were  in  no  mood  to  accept  as  final  such  an  unyielding  attitude  of 
conservatism  and  privilege  and  they  won  their  independence  in  a 
single  act  of  revolt. 

The  final  rupture  came  because  the  British  authorities  had  but 
one  remedy  for  radicalism,  whether  in  England  or  in  America,  and 
that  remedy  was  coercion.  The  age  was  not  one  of  compromise  or 
conciliation.  However  much  Burke  may  have  pleaded  for  greater 
civil  and  political  liberty  for  America  and  Pitt  may  have  wished  to 
substitute  a  policy  of  friendliness  and  affection  for  one  of  brute 
force,  the  mind  of  the  majority  in  parliament  was  not  favorable  to 
concession.  The  middle  class  Britisher  in  office  viewed  restlessness 
and  disorder,  not  as  a  manifestation  of  genuine  discontent  that 
ought  to  be  relieved,  but  as  an  evidence  of  sinful  depravity  and  con- 
genital ingratitude  toward  the  best  of  kings  and  the  wisest  of  min- 
istries that  ought  to  be  punished  as  a  child  was  wont  to  be  pun- 
ished for  wrong-doing.  Uprisings  were  to  be  suppressed  by  force, 
outrages  to  be  visited  with  fine  and  imprisonment,  offenses  against 
those  in  authority  to  be  dealt  with  as  acts  of  sedition,  public  meet- 
ings to  be  forbidden  as  menaces  to  peace  and  order,  and  radical 
speakers  and  writers  to  be  treated  as  demagogues  and  malcontents. 
Disobedience    was    contumacy,    opposition    defiance,    and    criticism 

11 


libel,  "wickedly,  scandalously,  maliciously,  and  seditiously  uttered 
or  printed  to  the  defamation  of  his  majesty's  government."  This 
was  the  spirit  of  the  eighteenth  century  government  in  England  and 
it  continued  to  influence  men  in  authority  there  for  twenty  years 
after  that  century  had  closed. 

Such  an  obstinated  adherence  to  the  divine  right  of  constituted 
authority  was  met  on  the  other  side  by  charges  of  oppression  and 
tyranny,  which  in  the  colonies  were  expressed  in  terms  of  extreme 
bitterness  and  reproach.  The  radical  leaders  in  America  would 
tolerate  no  "doctrine  of  passive  obedience  or  any  other  doctrine 
tending  to  quiet  the  minds  of  the  people  in  a  tame  submission  to 
unjust  legislation  or  control."  Should  'Great  Britain  succeed  in  her 
policy  then  would  they  and  their  posterity  "be  enslaved  deep  as 
any  Spaniard  or  African;"  with  liberty  expiring  they  would  become 
"veritable  Israelites  in  bondage,  deprived  of  happiness  and  even  of 
life  itself."  Everywhere  there  sprang  up  radical  organizations  with 
appropriate  symbols — iSons  and  Daughters  of  Liberty,  with  their 
Liberty  Trees  and  Ensigns  of  Liberty — whose  duty  it  was  to  resist 
to  the  utmost  the  "inexorable  enemies  of  American  freedom."  Many 
of  the  Sons  of  Liberty,  dissatisfied  with  words,  resorted  to  deeds  of 
violence  and  not  only  defied  the  laws  of  parliament  but,  believing 
that  their  own  colonial  governments  had  failed  them  and  were  im- 
potent to  meet  the  necessities  of  a  critical  situation,  derided  also 
the  authority  of  their  own  officials  and  the  laws  of  their  own  as- 
semblies. These  muscular  radicals,  like  their  fellows  in  every  rev- 
olutionary movement,  construing  the  "law  of  nature"  as  a  "law  of 
license,"  gave  themselves  free  rein,  inflicting  injuries,  destroying 
property,  and  even  threatening  the  lives  of  those  who  resisted  or 
opposed  them.  If  to  the  colonists  the  British  government  seemed 
tyrannous,  we  may  not  wonder  that  to  the  middle  class  Englishman 
the  colonists  seemed  perversely  stubborn  and  addicted  to  opinions 
and  practices  that  were  subversive  of  the  most  fundamental  tenets 
of  their  political  faith. 

Thus  the  American  Revolution,  like  nearly  all  revolutions  in  his- 
tory, was  an  uprising  not  against  a  king  and  his  ministers  but 
against  a  system  and  a  state  of  mind.  The  system  was  not  the  work 
of  George  III,  Grenville,  Hillsborough,  Townshend,  or  Lord  North; 
it  was  the  result  of  the  Revolution  of  1688,  which  gave  power  into 
the  hands  of  the  monied  middle  class  of  England,  under  whose  rule 
had  been  fashioned  those  rigid  and  sinister  ideas  of  power  and  gov- 
ernment, which  permeated  the  whole  official  world  of  king,  minis- 
tries, parliament,  council,  departments,  and  boards  that  had  to  do 
with  administration  at  home  and  abroad.  If  we  are  to  throw  the 
responsibility  for  the  revolution  upon  any  single  body  of  men,  let  it 
rest  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  lawyers — the  legal  advisers  of  crown 
and  departments,  who  in  their  opinions,  expressed  in  parliament, 
on  the  bench,  and  in  written  reports,  adhered  with  the  utmost  strict- 
ness to  the  letter  of  the  law  and  upheld  through  their  advice  the 
policy  of  no  concession.  We  must  say  something  of  course  of  the 
obstinacy,  prejudice,  and  personal  government  of  George  III,  of  the 

12 


stubbornness  and  duplicity  of  Hillsborough,  and  of  the  subserviency 
and  good  nature  of  Lord  North;  but  more  important  than  the  per- 
sonal influence  of  any  of  these  was  the  refusal  of  the  official  and 
legal  mind  in  England  to  depart  in  any  essential  particular  from  the 
rules  and  principles  which  governed  the  exercise  of  the  prerogative, 
the  management  of  trade  and  commerce,  and  the  relation  of  the  col- 
onis  to  the  empire  during  the  years  since  1689.  Were  I  writing  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  today,  I  should  indict  first  the  privy 
councillors  and  departmental  officials  who  had  to  do  with  colonial 
affairs,  and  then  Lord  Mansfield  and  others  of  the  legal  profession 
upon  whose  advice  these  officials  frequently  acted;  and  I  should  not 
forget  to  include  in  the  presentment  Sir  William  Blackstone  him- 
self, whose  "Commentaries"  published  in  1768-1769  confirmed  the 
middle  class  Englishman  in  his  overweening  conceit  of  power  and 
flattered  him  by  expressing  entire  content  with  the  law  and  consti- 
tution of  England  as  it  then  existed.  Blackstone  had  been  lecturing 
for  a  number  of  years  and  we  are  told  that  the  king  had  seen  a  part 
of  the  "Commentaries"  in  manuscript.  I  doubt  if  I  should  indict 
George  III  as  an  individual.  He  is  made  responsible  in  our  Declara- 
tion for  many  things  with  which  he  personally  had  nothing  to  do,  and 
for  more  than  a  century  and  a  quarter  has  been  the  scapegoat  of  the 
Revolution.  In  reality  his  personal  conduct  was  but  one  of  many 
factors  in  the  case  and  by  no  means  the  most  important  among 
them.  But  I  should  indict  the  king  as  the  embodiment  of  the  royal 
prerogative,  a  power  upheld  by  Blackstone  and  wielded  rather  by 
the  king's  councillors,  secretaries,  and  executive  departments  than 
by  himself,  and  one  that  was  thoroughly  disliked  and  resented  by 
the  colonists  as  interfering  with  their  management  of  their  own 
affairs.  In  revolting  against  the  prerogative  the  colonists  were 
opposing  a  legal  principle  rather  than  a  man,  but  a  principle  that 
was  maintained  in  England  as  a  fundamental  part  of  the  British 
constitution.  The  Declaration  of  Independence,  though  directed 
against  the  king  as  a  "tyrant"  and  as  one  "unfit  to  be  the  ruler  of  a 
free  people"  was  in  fact  an  indictment  of  the  constitutional  power 
of  the  prerogative;  it  was  not,  because  it  could  not  truthfully  be, 
an  indictment  of  a  man,  whether  of  German  descent  or  otherwise. 

What  conclusions  are  we  to  draw  from  this  brief  historical 
analysis  that  will  apply  to  the  furtherance  of  that  better  under- 
standing with  Great  Britain  which  the  World  War  has  done  so  much 
to  promote?  Mainly  two.  In  the  first  place  an  animosity  based 
on  a  reading  of  only  one  side  of  a  controversy  is  manifestly  unjust 
and  irrational.  Our  writers  have  hitherto  taken  the  view  of  the 
colonial  radicals  and  have  made  no  attempt  to  discover  or  to  under- 
stand the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  those  who  held  conservative 
and  moderate  views  in  America  or  who  upheld  the  British  argu- 
ment at  home.  It  is  one  thing  for  the  colonists,  in  the  bitterness  of 
their  experiences  and  angered  by  the  stupid  blundering  and  offensive 
conduct  of  British  officials,  to  raise  the  charge  of  oppression  and 
tyranny  against  Great  Britain  and  her  ministers;  but  it  is  quite 
another  thing  for  us  who  live  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  after  the 

13 


event  and  who  have  knowledge  that  our  forefathers  did  not  possess, 
to  keep  alive  this  bitterness  and  allow  it  to  influence  our  attitude 
toward  the  British  nation  at  the  present  time.  Our  ancestors  fought 
not  for  democracy,  in  any  modern  sense  of  the  term,  but  for  the 
right  to  order  their  own  affairs  in  their  own  way.  They  fought  for 
political  and  commercial  liberty  and  for  freedom  from  dependence 
on  the  British  crown  and  parliament,  and  as  a  people  which  had 
outgrown  the  swaddling  clothes  of  colonial  subordination  they  had 
their  justification  in  fact,  and,  as  they  interpreted  it,  in  theory  also 
— the  theory  of  the  rights  of  man.  Great  Britain  had  on  her  side 
the  law  and  the  constitution,  for  the  colonies  were  colonies  and  as 
such  were  subject  to  the  immutable  law  of  colonial  relationship; 
and  there  were  thousands  in  America  who  were  satisfied  with  this 
relationship  and  saw  in  revolution  only  anarchy  and  disaster,  en- 
dangering lives  and  threatening  prosperity.  Here  are  three  points 
of  view,  and  among  those  who  held  them  were  many  honorable  men 
who  were  equally  convinced  of  the  justness  and  equity  of  their 
positions.  Yet  who  among  our  American  writers  has  ever  honestly 
made  the  attempt  to  analyze  the  thoughts  and  opinions  of  the  Amer- 
ican moderates  before  the  Revolution  or  to  understand  the  logic  of 
those  who  argued  against  the  American  claims  in  the  British  par- 
liament? He  who  would  comprehend  the  Revolution  in  all  its  bear- 
ings must  study  it  in  the  light  of  the  conflicting  ideas  of  the 
eighteenth  century  and  must  fathom  the  British  mind  of  that  pe- 
riod with  as  much  impartiality  and  sympathy  as  he  fathoms  the 
minds  of  Franklin,  Adams,  and  Washington.  Until  we  know  why 
the  Loyalists  in  America  and  the  British  official,  lawyer,  and  mem- 
ber of  parliament  in  England  thought  as  they  did  and  acted  as  they 
did,  we  shall  continue  to  present  a  picture  that  is  not  only  provo- 
cative of  wrath  against  England  among  those  whose  minds  are  easily 
prejudiced  but  one  that  is  also  distorted  and  untrue. 

In  the  second  place,  the  American  Revolution  was  a  great  cosmic 
event  in  the  world's  history,  much  too  big  to  admit  of  wrath  over 
wrongs  so  long  dead  that  it  is  high  time  they  were  buried  and  their 
ghosts  laid  beyond  hope  of  resurrection.  It  has  been  well  said  that 
the  problems  of  today  are  too  great  to  permit  us  to  give  more  than 
a  passing  thought  to  the  quarrels  of  our  great-grandfathers.  Our 
Revolution  is  not  our  revolution  only;  it  is  a  part  of  the  history  of 
liberty,  of  humanity,  and  of  progress.  It  represents  what  Burke 
once  uttered  in  his  fine  way:  "The  question  with  me  is  not  whether 
you  have  a  right  to  render  your  people  miserable  but  whether  it  is 
not  your  Interest  to  make  them  happy.  It  is  not  what  a  lawyer  tells 
me  I  may  do,  but  what  humanity,  reason,  and  justice  tell  me  I 
ought  to  do."  The  mistake  of  the  British  government  lay  in  its 
rigid  adherence  to  the  letter  of  the  law  and  the  constitution  and  its 
failure  to  realize  that  sympathy  not  coercion  was  a  wise  policy  for 
governments  as  well  as  individuals.  The  strength  of  the  American 
cause  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  colonists  discarded  the  law  and  the 
constitution  and  responded  to  the  demand  that  lay  within  them  for 
a  liberty  of  action  which  they  deemed  necessary  to  their  happiness 

14 


and  prosperity  as  a  people.  Herein  lies  the  eternal  laws  of  progress, 
and  herein  lies  the  essential  features  of  a  struggle  that  will  go  on 
as  long  as  the  world  abides — the  struggle  between  those  who  have 
and  those  who  have  not  that  which  they  think  they  ought  to  have. 
The  ultimate  cause  of  the  American  Revolution  was  not  a  question 
of  oppression  versus  slavery — for  there  was  no  intentional  op- 
pression on  the  part  of  Great  Britain  or  threatened  slavery  on  the 
side  of  America.  It  was  a  question  of  freedom  from  the  selfish  and 
uncompromising  policy  of  a  governing  class;  of  freedom  from  the 
demands  of  a  newly-made  empire,  which  placed  the  wealth  and 
power  of  the  whole  before  the  interest  of  any  of  its  parts;  of  free- 
dom from  the  operation  of  a  body  of  law,  which  had  not  kept  pace 
with  the  mental  development  and  material  needs  of  a  colonial 
world,  already  in  fact,  if  not  in  name,  a  group  of  semi-independent, 
self-governing  political  communities.  There  is  no  place  in  a  strug- 
gle of  this  kind,  which  in  the  end  was  of  enormous  profit  to  Great 
Britain  herself,  for  the  perpetuation  of  brooding  animosities. 

But  still  more  important  is  it  for  those  who  would  use  these  old- 
time  grievances  to  sharpen  the  edge  of  popular  dislike  of  Great 
Britain  to  remember  that  England  and  the  English  of  the  present 
time  are  not  the  England  and  the  English  of  1776.  The  governing 
and  voting  element  in  the  United  Kingdom  of  1919  are  in  over- 
whelming numbers  the  heirs  not  of  the  privileged  classes  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  but  of  those  unprivileged  and  neglected  classes, 
which  suffered  greater  social  and  economic  wrongs  at  the  hands  of 
the  same  selfish  and  dominant  middle  class  than  ever  did  the  inhab- 
itants of  colonial  America.  iSurely  there  should  be  sympathy  here 
not  enmity,  for  both  have  fought  the  same  fight  against  a  privi- 
leged oligarchy.  We  too  often  forget  that  in  the  last  hundred  years, 
England  has  passed  through  a  revolution  in  her  political  and  social 
institutions  more  far-reaching  and  complete  than  has  any  other 
modern  state,  and  has  even  outstripped  us  ourselves  in  the  attain- 
ment of  democracy  and  social  liberty.  Yet  she  has  done  this  with  so 
little  outward  demonstration  as  almost  to  deceive  the  careless  ob- 
server into  believing  still  in  the  permanence  of  British  institutions. 
British  institutions  are  less  permanent  than  our  own.  There  is 
hardly  a  single  important  feature  of  government,  administration, 
and  dispensing  of  justice,  local  and  central,  that  has  not  undergone 
a  reformation  so  drastic  as  to  constitute  a  silent  revolution  of  a  pro- 
found and  fundamental  character. 

'In  four  great  acts  of  electoral  reform,  Great  Britain  has  enlarged 
her  voting  population  from  400,000  to  16,000,000,  and  has  admitted 
women  not  only  to  the  local  franchise  but  to  parliamentary  franchise 
as  well.  In  the  government  of  her  municipalities,  her  counties,  and 
her  parishes,  she  has  taken  the  control  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
oligarchic  and  aristocratic  elements  and  placed  it  in  the  hands  of 
the  voting  constituencies.  iShe  has  entered  upon  her  statute  books 
laws  touching  sanitation,  public  health,  factories,  land  monopoly, 
electoral  corruption,  old  age  pensions,  national  insurance,  and  the 
like  that  place  her  in  the  very  forefront  of  the  most  progressive 

15 


countries  in  the  world.  She  has  destroyed  the  political  advantages 
of  privilege,  caste,  and  wealth;  ,she  has  democratized  all  of  her  gov- 
erning bodies  and  made  them  everywhere  representative  of  the 
voting  population;  she  has  recognized  to  a  greater  extent  than  we 
are  willing  to  do  the  principle  of  state  control  of  all  matters  of 
national  welfare  and  is  ready  to  go  much  farther  as  soon  as  recon- 
struction has  begun. 

Above  all  else  she  is  now  facing  an  experiment  in  political  organ- 
ization that  is  grander  and  more  complex  even  than  the  one  which 
the  United  States  was  called  upon  to  face  in  the  establishment  of  a 
federal  republic.  Out  of  the  divers  and  scattered  parts  of  a  British 
empire  she  is  about  to  create  a  British  imperial  commonwealth  or 
a  British  commonwealth  of  nations,  call  it  what  you  will,  a  union  of 
five  self-governing  dominions,  with  India  an  integral  part  thereof, 
and  the  United  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  a  senior  part- 
ner in  the  enterprise.  How  it  will  be  accomplished  no  man  can  yet 
say,  but  one  thing  is  clear,  the  system,  whatever  it  may  be,  will 
combine  in  a  well-adjusted  balance  a  highly  developed  sense  of  unity 
at  the  center  with  freedom  and  equality  in  all  its  parts,  and  be 
founded  as  a  whole  not  on  might,  force,  or  compulsion,  but  on  moral 
principles — principles  of  justice,  equity,  and  equal  opportunity  for 
all.  This  transformation  of  the  British  empire  into  a  congeries  of 
autonomous  nations,  united  under  an  hereditary  kingship  and  a  cen- 
tral imperial  conference  or  cabinet,  and  bound  together  by  ties  of 
devotion  to  common  ideals  of  liberty  and  by  confidence  in  the  spirit 
of  fairness,  honor,  and  friendliness  governing  all,  is  an  event  in  the 
history  of  the  world  only  less  significant  than  the  founding  of  the 
League  of  Nations  itself. 

When  contrasted  with  these  magnificent  accomplishments  of  Great 
Britain  in  the  field  of  democracy,  just  government,  and  imperial  or- 
ganization, of  what  value  are  the  petty  animosities  based  on  a  super- 
ficial reading  of  history,  on  divergencies  of  material  interests,  or, 
what  is  worse,  on  trivial  dissimilarities  in  speech  and  manners,  and, 
with  many,  on  mere  personal  dislike  of  insularity,  condescension, 
hyphenated  names,  and  titles,  all  of  which  are  but  the  frills  and 
foibles  of  a  great  people?  Neither  the  quarrels  of  the  past  nor  the 
external  dissimilarities  of  the  present  must  be  allowed  to  destroy 
the  spiritual  agreement  of  the  two  greatest  democratic  nations  on 
earth,  an  agreement  resting  upon  instincts  and  ideals  of  moral  obli- 
gation and  duty  common  to  both  people.  In  the  last  analysis  the 
United  States  took  part  in  the  late  war,  not  for  Great  Britain  but 
with  her,  because  she  was  defending  the  same  forms  of  government 
and  the  same  principles  of  justice  as  those  in  which  we  believed; 
and  on  both  sides  the  men  who  fought  and  died  were  consciously 
or  unconsciously  the  guardians  of  the  same  civilization.  Both  peo- 
ples love  peace  and  will  fight  for  it;  both  are  committed  to  democ- 
racy, self-government,  and  the  general  welfare  of  mankind;  both 
are  possessed  of  loyalty,  courage,  and  indomitable  resolution  when 
a  goal  is  to  be  reached;  and  both  must  work  together,  as  they  have 
lately  fought  together,  not  in  a  spirit  of  mistrust  or  jealousy,  but  as 
brothers  and  comrades  joined  in  a  common  service,  the  political  and 
social  good  of  all  the  world. 

16 


